S China province pilots disclosing officials' properties

South China's Guangdong province has launched pilot projects that involve the disclosure of properties of local officials and their families, according to local disciplinary inspection authorities.

The provincial government will choose a county in the north of the province and a district in the Pearl River Delta region for the experiment.

The projects will be completed by 2014, said Huang Xianyao, secretary of the Guangdong Provincial Commission for Discipline Inspection of the Communist Party of China (CPC).

He added that the experiment will be gradually expanded to other areas in Guangdong.

Huang, also a member of the standing committee of the CPC Guangdong Provincial Committee, said the projects are launched after studying and learning from the experience of Hong Kong and Macao Special Administrative Regions and other countries.

Wang Qishan, the anti-corruption chief of the CPC, pledged to enhance supervision of cadres to prevent corruption and improve the party's working style at a seminar on Nov. 30.

He Zengke, a researcher at the Central Compilation and Translation Bureau, said at the seminar that declaration and publicity of officials and their families' properties serve as basic steps of preventing corruption.

Relevant laws and regulations should be enacted to promote the implementation of the declaration and publicity system, He said.

Meanwhile, China's first office integrating the functions of disciplinary inspection, supervision, anti-corruption and audit was founded in Hengqin New Area in the city of Zhuhai in September.

Huang said the integration of different functions is conducive to the communication and coordination among these departments and saves manpower and social resources.